Reputation system: meaning & value

WWE SHOW : Curtis Angle London Beach Man VS Lady GAGA and heir upskirt

And the Winner is ?

You should, Oliver. I really want to play with your new LGS for a while. BTW I know there exist people who can just stand in front of audience doing nothing and people laugh as hell. Once they start to speak there is another explosion of laugh, even that was just "hi" what they said. The magic of charisma. So, maybe you can start standing in front of the mirror and train doing funny faces.

brucemir, I too have always enjoyed viewing your laser rainbow threads and the ways you had different setups look so awesome! I do agree that the rep system has gotten a little crazy but try to focus more on what people look forward to seeing from you then those silly green squares.

Here's some rep to help you out

Edit: Too much rep given on last 24 hours, I owe you a rep now

-Alex

Hap said:

brucemir, I too have always enjoyed viewing your laser rainbow threads and the ways you had different setups look so awesome! I do agree that the rep system has gotten a little crazy but try to focus more on what people look forward to seeing from you then those silly green squares.

Here's some rep to help you out

Edit: Too much rep given on last 24 hours, I owe you a rep now

-Alex

Click to expand...

Great, Alex. I think, Bruce deserves to be boosted a bit. For his work done here, not just because of nothing. I feel a bit bad having higher rep than him, since he contributed much more than me IMO. Like the case I described in OP.

brucemir said:

Hey Cel,
That it how it used to be. The whole idea of Madmacro's spreadsheet is rep points per post to show the ratio. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. Now there must be dozens of members who have more rep points and a higher rep/post ratio than myself in one year than I have had in 5 years of posting over 1000 laser photographs (No exxageration!) and I see people who have been here a year or so have TRIPLE my rep points. WTF!!
There is no way to spin this. It used to be a rarity to have more reps than posts. Now it is the norm with many people with zero substance getting rep points at a crazy rate. Like I said earlier "Everyone gets a trophy for participating"

SO lets just reinforce this and now we have an Awards thread. for Veterans. Obviously most of the members are more than deserving, but I see members in so little time being a veteran and getting "awards".

Yeah OK

Click to expand...

Bruce
here are my observations

As I'm sure you know, and a lot of others here to, that you are a well respected member of the community, probably mostly for your god-like skill with a camera and lasers.

Now, as I'm sure you will appreciate, perhaps the reason you haven't got as many reps as you might like is because well, by your own admission, you haven't been posting!

So I have to say your posts about the rep system and how you've got much less rep than some of the others, sort of comes across as you having a bit of a temper tantrum feeling you should have more reps given the effort you've put into photos.

Whether or not I agree or disagree with this is irrelevant, but even if you only stopped posting 6 months ago, the rate at which the rep system is growing means people are getting left behind quickly.

Is it right? Well, here's my take on it

When I joined some 4/5 years ago, there were a few "elite" members who had large amounts of rep, large enough to swing newer members into a deep red if they wanted to. One member in particular happens to be an intelligent bright minded individual, but doesn't seem to realise that the bounds of even their extensive knowledge must come to an end. I have witnessed this member argue the toss with others, belittle them, rep-farm so they can neg-rep people into submission and has even forced people off the board. I have had them post in my own threads, commented on a device a friend of mine built for me (said friend happens to have a high degree of electrical knowledge) and basically tell me that the inner workings of the device don't work like that and that I'm, basically, a liar.

Now, apart from the fact that the way this individual generally addresses people on the board leaves a lot to be desired, their snarky "I know everything" behaviour is banhammer material on some forums. So when the "community takeover" of the rep system disabled this smart-ass know-it-alls ability to bully people into submission and make them feel like cr@p, I welcomed it. Personally, i don't really care about any of it, I hardly come here anymore and certainly no longer feel like I class as a "reg" any more but a community effort which effectively bands together to oust a negative "bad egg" on a forum is commendable.

Hey Trencheel,
It is not that, as I could easily post all the photos I want. I photograph lasers almost every day! It used to be very very rare for people to have more reps than posts. Now everybody does. That was it. That is my whole point! This is something I have posted about months ago. It is not the amount of reps , but the amount of reps compared to posts. And do you what, this has really pissed my off for months which is why I kind of gave up posting here. Now that this is off my chest and moving forward I will chill out a bit. Bottom line is a few years ago nobody had more reps than posts, now a great deal of people do. That is what upset me, not the amount of reps I get. I appreciate and respect your opinion!

This is not about me getting reps!!! (but thanks)

I understand Bruce.
I repped for your photography as it is simply amazing to look at IMO.

3D, IMO = in my opinion.
Just in case you see and wonder what that is.

Bruce, do not take it wrong from me now. Just read it as you have not these certain historical experience (or how to say it) with rep, please.

Is there any reason, why rep and post counts should be at same ratio? I mean in relation with time. If you consider post number to rise more less linear in time for a given member (assuming abut the same average quality of them) and rep of this member to have more like geometric (not completely sure, but definitely not linear) growth (since the more you receive the more you give and so on accros the comunity), there is inevitable that in some longer period of time this ratio (rep/posts) will grow. Still at short and same periods of time this might be comparable somehow between members. Even if I assume the reps are in average not given for free, mathematically I cannot get out as the rep system is designed this way. Maybe this is what is a bit "frustrating" to you (sorry about the term, I cannot find better - milder equivalent).

Still this ratio seems to me to be maybe one key factor used to build metrics to measure repflation (on entire community basis) and key to separate effects of "rep system generated" inflation and "price/value" of inflation. By "price/value" I mean the post and how it is appreciated. In other words, how much quality it has for community here and how much rep* is given. By rep* I mean some form of normalized rep - for sure without "rep system generated" inflation and some community specifics (like size and other even relevant parameters like some overall activity factor - how much posts is created in some period of time). Of course there is more research and analysis needed.

But if we had something to evaluate this rep* we could say something how much the system is wrongly used and rep is given for free or posts with no to little value and possibly issue some rules/recommendation for rep giving. I know there are a few threads about that, but maybe they should be updated and brought more to the attention.

Not sure if it is understandable, but it is also point of this thread - to look at rep system more deeply and possibly improve it by the way how community uses it.

Just adding ideas inspired by Brucemir's posts.

I think reps are more so a form of feedback, as they're intended to be. Hence the "I approve" and "I disapprove" on the dialog. The number is meaningless as it really has no connection to anything else and doesn't give much of an advantage, aside from looking better to newcomers and power over others' rep count. Sure it's pretty inflated but it's still scaled correctly, vets/most active users have the highest rep count, newcomers have nothing until 50 posts, and everything in between. There's too much focus on this topic IMO.

I agree with your arguments, EP. Stil, I'm interested how it could be analyzed, what would be conclusions and what it would say about the community here and potential further benefits for LPF from this system. I do not have much time for building some sophisticated metrics now as there is full list of ongoing projects already. The projects of much higher interest from me than doing proper and accurate work on this rep stuff. Still if someone is interested in doing so, I let him/her to proceed with what I rised here.

The "rep inflation" is an unavoidable fact of the system. It was always going to grow and become larger than the amount of posts people have - this is unavoidable. As more people add rep, their rep power increases, and so the amount of rep they give increases, ad infinitum. So it's not surprising that as the forum has matured the rep to post ratio has gone wonky. Our little "community effort" has sped this process up slightly, but probably not much as the effects will always be exponential.

I compare the rep inflation to fiat currency inflation as they both behave in a similar way. They both decrease in value and need more of the same unit to have the desired effect. When everyone is rich, everyone is poor again.

Countries solve it by removing a few zeros off the end, like what Russia did with the Ruble a few decades ago. Really though I see it as solving a problem that doesn't exist; the number of points is higher but the net effect is the same. A few of the trailing numbers could be knocked off everyone's rep power but then it just becomes a numbers game.

trencheel303 said:

The "rep inflation" is an unavoidable fact of the system. It was always going to grow and become larger than the amount of posts people have - this is unavoidable. As more people add rep, their rep power increases, and so the amount of rep they give increases, ad infinitum. So it's not surprising that as the forum has matured the rep to post ratio has gone wonky. Our little "community effort" has sped this process up slightly, but probably not much as the effects will always be exponential.

I compare the rep inflation to fiat currency inflation as they both behave in a similar way. They both decrease in value and need more of the same unit to have the desired effect. When everyone is rich, everyone is poor again.

Countries solve it by removing a few zeros off the end, like what Russia did with the Ruble a few decades ago. Really though I see it as solving a problem that doesn't exist; the number of points is higher but the net effect is the same. A few of the trailing numbers could be knocked off everyone's rep power but then it just becomes a numbers game.

Click to expand...

Rep+ for great points. Stil I'm not sure what kind of relation there is, but likely kind of exponential growth - that I meaned by geometric. Sorry if I confused it with geometric sequence (was not meaned like that).

Edit: BTW great avatar. :crackup:

I reckon polynomial is a better fit for rep inflation. To be honest, most growth curves would break down as the inflation is variable due to the individuals involved.
For example one member can grow quicker than another simply by who reps them. If you are being repped by high rep power members then you will grow quickly.

Another option for model. Hmm... Now the statistics should be applied, calculate how fitting it is data.

Will do.